Discovery Park

'Microrings' could nix wires for communications in homes, offices

March 4, 2010

Purdue University researchers have developed a miniature device capable of converting ultrafast laser pulses into bursts of radio-frequency signals, a step toward making wires obsolete for communications in the homes and offices of the future.
Such an advance could enable all communications, from high-definition television broadcasts to secure computer connections, to be transmitted from a single base station, said Minghao Qi, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering.
"Of course, ideas about specific uses of our technology are futuristic and speculative, but we envision a single base station and everything else would be wireless," he said. "This base station would be sort of a computer by itself, perhaps a card inserted into one of the expansion slots in a central computer. The central computer would take charge of all the information processing, a single point of contact that interacts with the external world in receiving and sending information."

July 29, 2015

Shortly before joining the faculty in the School of Chemical Engineering at Purdue as Associate Professor, Dr. Vilas Pol worked on a project at Argonne National Laboratory that has been selected as Finalist for a 2015 R&D 100 Award.

July 28, 2015

High-performance aircraft turbine engine manufacturers are facing unprecedented increases in the amount of heat that must be released in order to maintain acceptable temperatures in supersonic engines that is required for the aircraft to operate at optimum levels.